6.25.2010

The economy of intellectual property and virtual merchandise is on the precipice of a shift. Where does it go to? Let me guess at you:

* Ad-served: Hulu and Pandora have been successful at providing extremely varied content to users for free. This will likely be standardized throughout the virtual merchandise field to capitalize on the market lost to illegal downloaders. This may be accomplished by developing any system that is comparable easier/faster at delivering the music of interest to the end-user as a way of outcompeting the illegal access. The speed category will be harder to compete in as the speed and availability of wifi networks increases, but ease of integration has no foreseeable ceiling. Legitimate/commercial sources should never be outcompeted by open source if managed correctly. Regardless of philosophies, the commercial industries have more resources at their disposal. A greater shift of investment to research & investment would clinch this advantage by (at least temporarily) reducing competition, and increasing the positive-sum opening of novel niches within the market. Any perceived advertising bubble could easily be avoided by only selling ads for concrete products on these services.

* Facebook model: I don't know enough about economics to know how this will come about in practice. Somehow a relative relationship between competing products would be monitoring based on use and ratings (e.g. "likes"), which would then be correlated to a corresponding "virtual share of the market". Ok fuck I just got it. Integration with a stock market-type system of investment would allow a pool of money to be available to flow to the producers. Perhaps even as information technology advances, investment into specific products rather than mere corporations would create more precise selection pressures to drive innovation.

I remember when I used to want to teach a parrot to repeat longer and longer phrases. Then I would've taught him to argue that he is producing conscious thought but that he is deaf and blind so cannot respond to specific questions. But then I realized to make it believable I'd probably hafta really blind him... So I've changed it to a cockatiel instead.

6.23.2010

My cowerker was talking at meh about some Dateline report about such and such nasal spray drug may cause loss of sense of smell. That almost got me thinking... and then suddenly, it did. I wonder what the bioeconomics (not a real word) of getting rid of your smell and taste senses would be. Oxford style debate begins now!

Pro: As Americans we need to constantly be moving towards improved health and fitness. The deletion of increasingly detrimental peripheral senses such as taste and smell would be beneficial for two main reasons. The fast food industry has taken off by creating superstimuli-containing products that serve to overstimulate senses which have evolved over time for location of sources of nutrition. Unfortunately, as subjective experience benefits from only minimal discriminatory power the conditions in which these senses developed have increasingly been used against us. According to the CDC's death most recent statistics on the leading causes of death for Americans, a full 45% are directly attributable to these superstimulating diets (e.g. heart disease, stroke, and diabeetus; source: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/lcod.htm). This is not to mention the potential for contributory causality in some cancers and secondary causality for CKD in both heart disease and diabeetus. Read this as you are equally likely to ultimately die from what you are eating as all other causes combined. We have progressed to the point that we can consciously decide what is healthy to eat independent of these outdated senses, and loss of pleasure in food would likely push the average diet more towards the healthy end of the spectrum this sentence feels like a runon what do you think? (Oh and caloric restriction is associated with longer healthy lifespan even in macaques). Any potential venue for mitigation of this epidemic should be investigated. Its so ez to do in practice too: just spray botulism toxin up your nose and cut off thine tongue with rusty shears in the bathroom.

Pro: A fully disparate potential avenue for goodifying ourselves is the fact that brain real estate is at maximum capacity in the short term. Thus to maximize competitive fitness psychosocial evolution must therefore supercede the reproductive flavor. In this vein, eliminating unnecessary and clearly detrimental sensory inputs would actually free up room (at least) in the quickly reassigned neocortical columns that had been occupied by taste and smell processing. This would allow additional networking of progressively iterative abstractions such as other sensory perception, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning, conscious thought and language. I, for one, clearly have too much neocortical resources assigned to language based on this blog.

Con: I mean "with".

The Oxford style I referred to in the jump was actually Oxford, Kentucky. Hope that clears up any rash you likely have.

Revised demographic: just me.

Should I add a picture? I am not finding one of rusty shares clipping off a tongue in a batheroom... hrmmm... Do me a favor and just imagine it. Kthx.

6.22.2010

I start writing agains now. If not, mebbeh I forget how to use my Englishes (but whut are odds of that scenario occurratizing?). I can't believe I'm finally going to get paid to write this stuff (disclaimer: only indirectly, I'm writing this at work.) If there's one thing about me its that I'm dynamical (eg: I avoid regular sentence formatting).

Forecast: This is gunna be a chimera of thought-provoking essays and funny doodoo talk that is in essence embelished versions of my fb statuses.

Proposed Reader Demographic: People who want to take longer to laugh at simple joax (the essays) and people who have itchy brains.

*Stands back and looks*

DONE!

Reminder to self: write about what you think about what you read (well I think that's rubbish). See if you can't not combine psych/econ/computer with a fully-functioning rofflecoptormobile. (If you forgot where you hid your itchy reading links you emailed it to the one of you that lives in Walnut Creek.)

About Me

My life began when my grandma started giving birth to me in the middle of the street. Luckily, my daughter happened to be competing in a nearby breakdance competition and was able to drive us to the hospital. The labor took almost 15 hours, but when my grandma finally put the baby doctor in my arms I knew it'd all been worth it.

Since then the highlights have included a bachelor's in genetics, a doctorate in pharmacy, and I'm currently working on a degree in computer science. My goal is to then pursue a PhD researching the mechanisms by which evolution has scaled up perception.